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Four random chords forming a quadrilateral

Question

Mark 88 points on a circle and draw every chord joining two of them. Now choose 44 of these chords uniformly at random. What is the probability that the chosen chords are exactly the four sides of a convex quadrilateral?

Short answer

2/5852/585. There are (82)=28\binom{8}{2}=28 chords, hence (284)=20475\binom{28}{4}=20475 equally likely choices. Each set of 44 points determines exactly one convex quadrilateral, giving (84)=70\binom{8}{4}=70 good choices, and 70/20475=2/58570/20475=2/585.

Adapted from QuantQuestions.io; question and answer rewritten by SelfMadeQuant.com.

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